I recently completed my essay on this topic, which you can read in full here. Since that space on Globalities does not allow for comments or reactions, I invite you to post your reactions to it into the Comments box here:
Gaza’s agony: Ten theses and an agenda (Comments)
Thank you so much Helena, for the tremendous work and thought in your theses, and the fair and careful presentation without any of the nasty jabs at anyone usually found in such essays. It all sounds very reasonable though of course that is not what everyone wants. To me, the most difficult part is undoing the “settlements” so deeply embedded in the WB since 1967 and the forming of the Palestinian State taking this into account. Ariel Sharon and others have done a very good job of ensuring a State for Palestinians could not be formed by their piece by piece “changes”.
All the best to you, Rosemary
Hullo, dear Rosemary. You are right, that getting the Israelis out of the West Bank settlements will not be easy, to say the least. But the “two-state outcome” is what nearly the whole of the international community is committed to– and it requires extremely painful concession from both sides. For the seven million or so Palestinian refugees who’ve been waiting since 1948-49 to exercise their Right of Return, it will require that nearly all of them will have to accept compensation in place of actual return. For the settlers, it will require an uprooting (except for those who would be content to stay where they are under Palestinian governance.) On the other hand, their presence there is quite illegal under international law. So the Israeli government that placed them there can take responsibility for resettling them. I feel that we in the West have been “groomed” for far too long to accept the idea that removing the settlers is impossible. It isn’t.